


Necessary Simulation

by smitshappens



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Gen, mstie fluff n' stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-15 23:41:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15424224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smitshappens/pseuds/smitshappens
Summary: There's a problem with the test subject and it's up to Kinga to solve it.





	Necessary Simulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SylaBub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylaBub/gifts).



> Hopefully, this fulfills the cute/fluff/summery request by SylaBub! There is art in progress that accompanies it, so stay tuned. That's on the way!
> 
> UPDATE: Some art has been added!

“Max, have you run diagnostics on the Kingachrome converter yet?”

He sighed and nodded, pompadour bouncing.  “Yes, Your She-vilness. Same as every week. Still ship-shape.”

Kinga nodded and checked the item off her clipboard.  “Excellent. Looks like we’re on track to start the next round of experiments.”  She paused and eyed her assistant harshly. “As long as there are no giant robotic monsters this time.”

“So I made a mistake!”  Max crossed his arms and huffed.  “Are you ever going to forgive me for that?”

“I’ll take it under consideration,” she snorted and wheeled around the other way on her heel.

Max sighed.  “That’s good enough for me.”

A static buzz filled the air, then the God Monitor bubbled to life, its purple effervescence revealing two of the robots on the Satellite of Love.  The gold one was so close to the camera, his eyes filled one whole half of the screen. Meanwhile, the red robot was in the back, floating back and forth--If he’d had legs, he would have been pacing.

“Hey, Kinga?” the gold robot began.  “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a problem up here.”

Kinga cocked her head sideways, taken aback by the robots’ ability to contact her, instead of vice versa.  She was sure that none of her settings had been tampered with, but then she remembered Jonah’s sly hacking of the video plumbing earlier.  “Can I ask how you called me first, Crow?”

“We’ve been hanging around Jonah. Duh.”

Of course.  “Do go on, before I lose my patience, as well as my temper.”

“Well, speaking of Jonah,” the little red robot interrupted, “he’s not doing so well lately.”

The redhead blanched.  “Wait, what? Is he sick? Fever?  Servo, I need to know everything, stat!”

Crow rolled his eyes in disgust and groused.  “You ever had to deal with a homesick Hawaiian before?”

The feeling of dread and worry that Kinga had before suddenly drained away to disgust.  “This is what you called me about?”

Tom Servo practically shoved Crow out of the way.  “You have to do something. He stays holed up in his room all day and when he _does_ leave, he just mopes around the ship.  There’s no banter, no goofy inventions, not even any bad puns!  He’s no fun like this!”

“ _CHEEEEEEEE-HOOOOOOOOOO…._ ”

A cry echoed behind the bots.

“Then there’s _that_ ,” Crow spat.  “That is not a normal human distress call.  That’s...what _is_ that?”

“Maybe if you sent us a few cans of Spam?  Couple of beach postcards?” Servo persisted.

“Are you telling me that a steady, perfectly climate controlled environment and endless entertainment isn’t enough for him?”  Kinga tossed her clipboard onto the console, then ran her fingers into her hair. “It’s not like we don’t take care of him!”

Max hesitantly tapped her shoulder.  “You did kidnap him, my Iron Lady.”

She bristled and Max quickly withdrew his hand.

“Maybe if you tried to make him feel less homesick?” he offered.  “With him in a mood like this, the riffs won’t be as good and your Netflix ratings might drop.”

Kinga looked at him, pondering the weight of the situation.  Indeed, if their test subject was suffering, so would their experiment, and it had been nothing less than successful so far.

Right.  She could fix this.  Well, she could try.

“Cambot!  Find Heston! I have to see this for myself.”

The video feed shook up and down as the camera robot nodded, then dutifully zoomed toward the bridge entrance.  Each doorway following opened, until the bot had reached the room marked with a giant numeral “3”. As the doors parted, Cambot panned down, revealing Jonah splayed on the floor.  He had his feet propped in the bed and was on his back, arms akimbo. His glasses had flopped up onto his forehead and he looked, for lack of any better word, utterly _miserable_.  This was a stark contrast to how cheerful he usually seemed.

“Hey, Cambot,” Jonah whimpered.  “You doin’ okay there, buddy?” He squinted, then pulled his glasses into place.  “Wait, your red light’s on. Are you _broadcasting?_ ”

“Heston, you look pathetic,” Kinga snarled through the speaker on the bot’s back.

“She’s not wrong,” Crow added.

Jonah let his head fall back to the floor.  “Eh, I don’t care anymore. I’m in the cold embrace of space now.”

“Oh, wow.”  Kinga had to take a step back.  She really couldn’t let him suffer like that.  It did sort of tug on her heartstrings. And it was so unsettling for Jonah not to have a big goofy grin plastered on his face.

She keyed in a few commands, then slammed her palm down on the blinking purple button at the end of the console.

“We’re putting a stop to this right now, Heston.”

“Hmm?”  Jonah barely turned his head, unfazed.  That is, until a rumble began roaring down the ship hallway, getting louder as it neared his room.

It was The Tube.

“Aw geez!”  He attempted to right himself, his feet tangling in the bedsheets and dragging them into the floor.  He successfully freed himself from them, only to be pulled into the familiar, terrifying vacuum of The Tube.  Even with as commonplace as that damned thing was, it still managed to make him scream. It was genuinely scary.

A few cold, petrifying seconds later, Jonah found himself in a heap on the floor of Moon 13’s main hall.  As the dizziness in his head cleared, he realized he was no longer in his jumpsuit. He’d landed fully clothed for vacation--Board shorts, boat shoes, and a purple button-up patterned with little skulls.  “How...the heck?”

Max appeared before him and offered a hand up.  Jonah gladly took it. “New invention. It’s called the Quick Change.  What do you think?”

As Jonah stood, he realized one thing was off.  “My underwear’s on backwards. Can I get a minute alone?”

 ~~~

Single-file, both Max and Jonah followed Kinga through one of the many hallways of Moon 13.  There were still so many areas that Jonah didn’t even know existed. Amazing what one madwoman could do with a hollowed-out moon.

In the time Jonah had taken to right himself, Max and Kinga had managed a quick change of their own, with Max in a getup similar to Jonah’s, save for the shirt, which was all black and patterned with green cat silhouettes.  Kinga was outfitted in a purple sundress and sandals, a large white sun hat on her head. She carried a shoulder bag, while Max was saddled with a picnic basket, oversized towels and what had to be the biggest umbrella this side of the Milky Way.

As they rounded a corner, Jonah had to dodge Max’s umbrella, lest he lose an eye.  “Kinga, where exactly are we going?”

The trio stopped at a huge, hexagonal entrance.  Kinga pecked in a few numbers on a keypad at the side and the doors separated with a swift “WHOOSH”.  Inside, the room was black and so empty, their footsteps echoed almost endlessly.

“I’ve been refining this for some time,” she announced happily.  “Technically, it’s still a work in progress, but I think we’re far enough along for a genuine test run.”  She ran ahead of the two men, arms spread wide. “This is the Simulacron. In this room, we can recreate nearly anything!  Just watch. Run beach mode!”

The black walls lit up with neon green grids, which began to multiply until they began forming into different colors and shapes.  First, there was sand, then the room lit up with a bright blue sky.

“It’s a holodeck!” Jonah gasped.

“It’s the Simulacron,” Kinga corrected.  “My invention.”

As the scenery began filling the room, Jonah skipped around the grids that were left, as if playing the most awkward game of hopscotch.  “No, seriously--You ever watch Star Trek? This is totally a holodeck!”

Kinga clenched her fists and stomped her feet, indignant.  “Would you _please_ let me have this one thing?!”

Jonah continued skipping until his feet landed in the most realistic sand he’d encountered since he had been back home.  “Whoa.” He raked the toe of his shoe through it and it reacted exactly as it should have, softly crumbling underfoot. As he contemplated the sand, he heard the distinct roar of the ocean behind him.  He turned and faced what seemed like an endless horizon, beautiful and blue. It was so peaceful, it was sort of unsettling.

For a moment, Jonah forgot that he was on the Moon.  His brain was telling him that he was clearly in a simulation, that none of this was real.  His heart had him throwing his shoes aside and running toward the water.

“Oh geez, Jonah-- _Jonah_ , that hasn’t been tested yet!”  Kinga threw down her bag and made a sprint for her test subject.  “Stop before you run into a wall!”

“Wall? What wall?”  He bobbed around in the water, as Kinga stood knee-deep near the shore.  He allowed himself to float a moment or two before kicking back toward land.  “You’re still in beta. Somebody’s gotta take the risk.”

Max was quick to join Kinga, though he looked more baffled than she did.  “Is everything okay?” He stepped back as Jonah righted himself and stood, completely soaked.  “You’re…. _smiling?_ ”

He shrugged.  “Maybe I am.” He trudged back to dry land, shaking the water out of his hair.  “Do we wanna go over notes on this thing or what? 'Cause I’m down for more testing.”

Max leaned close to Kinga’s ear.  “He’s not wrong about needing notes.  That’s a distinct change from the sad sack we brought down from the ship.”

Kinga didn’t respond.  She kept staring at Jonah as he fumbled with one of the oversized towels, then flopped down on it in the sand.

“Your She-vilness?”  Max tugged at her elbow until she finally shook her head, snapping from her daze.  “Are you feeling alright?”

“I think he’s happy,” she scoffed.  “That’s the first time I think I’ve seen him genuinely _happy_.  Max, he’s a prisoner.  Prisoners aren’t supposed to be happy.  We’re supposed to be tormenting him with endless cinematic drivel.”  She yanked her hat from her head, crunching the thin straw weave in her fingers.  “I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I? Grandma’s going to think I’m a failure.”

Max slid a comforting arm around her shoulder.  “Your brand of evil is more capitalism based. It’s a truly insidious kind of evil.”

She gestured at her test subject.  “But I’m supposed to monitor his mind, right? Drive him crazy?”

“Your idea of torture is a bit on the fringe,” Max offered.  “...Like….fringe on your Grandma’s couch cushions, maybe.”

“It’s so hard to be evil,” she whined.  “I have so much to live up to.”

“You’re doing fine,” Max reassured her with a grin.  “Come on, you programmed a beach. We might as well get some good out of it, right?”

He was rewarded with a kiss on the forehead.

 ~~~

 Jonah had dozed a bit, simply enjoying not being in space.  It was warm and comfortable, the sound of the waves rolling was the perfect soundtrack to a lazy day.  He’d have to remember to put all of this down in his notes about the beta test.

Notes, beta, whatever.  Thankfully, Kinga had the foresight not to program seagulls into the Simulacron.  It was much quieter and more relaxing this way.

He closed his eyes again for a moment or two, thinking of home.  This wasn’t home, obviously, but it was a very nice facsimile.

Two shadows loomed over him and he had to shield his eyes in order to focus on who was whom of the two.  “Hey guys.”

“Heston, you can’t get too comfortable,” Max said, his voice sounding downright giddy.

“You said yourself that we need to finish testing and record everything,” Kinga added.  “Don’t forget that you’re still a test subject.”

Jonah propped himself up on his elbows.  “You’re not gonna throw a movie at me _here_ , are you? Come on!”

“Not a movie, Heston.”  And with that, both Kinga and Max dumped sand pails of water on his head, then ran.

“Oh, you are in for it now!”  Jonah scrambled to his feet, giving chase to the pair of Mads until they split directions.  At one point, they were in the most disorganized game of tag ever, with everyone screaming “SERPENTINE!” and taking off in circles.  At last, they collapsed near the shore, a laughing heap, with Jonah in the middle.

“How is this...particular experiment making you feel?” Kinga asked quietly.

Jonah sighed.  “I still miss home.  That’s never going to go away.”

“Well, rats,” Max grumped.

Jonah draped an arm over his shoulder and propped his head on top of Max’s.  “This is _great_ , though, guys.  It means a lot.” He looped his other arm over Kinga, giving her a peck on the top of her head.  “Thank you.”

Kinga blushed and quickly ducked, hiding her face.  “Nice to see that dumb grin back on your big stupid face.”

“Trust me, it’s much better than the hurt.”

They all sat silent for a time, but for once, it wasn’t awkward. Jonah rested his chin on top of Kinga’s head.  “You didn’t program a sunset, did you?”

She shrugged his head off hers and stared at him through narrowed eyes.  “You don’t think I’d miss a chance to show off, do you?” She gave him a wide, proud smile.  “Sunset mode!”

The simulated sun in the sky slowly descended, bringing with it beautiful shades of gold and red, gradually melting into a rich jewel-toned purple.

Jonah placed his chin back on Kinga’s head.  “Can we do this again tomorrow?”

 


End file.
